by Anthony Tata
“Bree? That slut?”
“Don’t ask. She got in last night after spending the night with her Saturday. She’s acting strange.”
Nina considered the comment and asked, “How much time do we have left?” She was leaning against the center island of the kitchen holding a dish towel in her hand.
“You know as well as I do when Amanda’s birthday is, Mama. We’ve got less than a week.”
“That’s not going be a problem, is it?”
“Depends on how everything plays out.”
Nina sat next to her daughter in an adjacent chair, resting her wrinkled arm on the reflective sheen of the recently polished kitchen table. She was wearing a sleeveless chartreuse top with bone-white Capri pants and matching straw sandals. She stared at her arm, then covered it quickly with her hand. If only there was plastic surgery for arms.
“Well, this is what it’s all about. You know what they say. ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ The question is, are you tough enough? Can you look her in the eyes and do what you need to do?”
“I haven’t had any problems so far, Mama.”
“That was child’s play, literally. You remember what they said to Herschel Walker when he finally joined a real football team? ‘Welcome to the NFL.’ You’ve got a half a million dollars from that worthless son of a bitch sitting out there. He made it hard on you in life, and now he’s making it hard on you when he’s dead.”
“Amanda has gone to this shrink. Then she went up to the house. She was required to do those things, and she’s done them. I’ll talk to her before she goes to school this morning, and we’ll get the Army guys back over here to sign all the paperwork.”
“Before her birthday?”
“Before her birthday.”
Nina leaned back into her chair and nodded in approval. Over the years she had nudged and cajoled when necessary. Other times she had intervened and been more direct, more forthright, like she did at Riley Dwyer’s office. She was raised in the same swamps in which Francis Marion had earned his “Swamp Fox” moniker during a time when blacks weren’t slaves, but they might as well have been. Real men beat their wives, screwed the “help,” and sometimes slept with their daughters. The tough girls escaped, some with the scars, some without.
Nina Hastings could be someone’s best friend and an instant later be working a serrated edge into their back. A vacuous narcissism dominated her psyche, and some of her theatrics were Oscar-worthy. Over time she had developed the street fighter’s knack of recognizing a threat and either establishing an alliance or swiftly cutting its throat. Some of her instinct was primal, as if she’d been raised in a jungle of beasts that wanted to take what she had gathered. All that mattered to Nina Hastings was that she got hers, and she kept it.
Agile enough to socialize and win key acquaintances to her fold, her veneer would shed as quickly as snakeskin when a threat presented itself. Moreover, she could seize an opportunity better than any battlefield general, exploiting her daughter and granddaughter like infantrymen sent as fodder to enemy trenches, to achieve her victory.
“Hey, Mom,” Amanda said, sitting down to the table with her book bag over her shoulder. Her hair was still wet from the shower.
This was Nina’s cue to melt away. Never be near the conflict, if it was to develop. Amanda glanced at her grandmother’s visage disappearing into the dining room. Amanda grabbed two pieces of toast from a plate on the table and took ample bites.
“Good morning, Amanda.” Her mother hesitated. “Are we going to talk about this weekend?”
She swallowed hard and said with a partially full mouth, “Well, Jake’s in jail, and I’m kinda freaked out right now.”
“Jail? Why would Jake be in jail?”
“Something happened to Miss Dwyer and to Dad’s house—”
“Who’s house?”
“My dad’s house, Mom. You know, your ex-husband?”
Amanda had rarely used the term “Dad” in the presence of her mother or grandmother because of the reaction the utterance would create. He may be your biological father, but he’s no Dad.
“Don’t talk to me that way, Amanda. We’ve got something more important to talk about right now.”
“Wait a second.” Amanda held her hands up as if warding off an attacker. “My boyfriend’s in jail and my father’s house burned down, maybe, and there’s something more important?”
“What can you do about the house, if indeed it burned?”
“I can find out what happened, first of all. There was a lot of important . . .”
“What? There was a lot of important what? What was in that bastard’s house that you want?”
“What is up with you? The man’s dead and you don’t have the decency to talk about him with any respect whatsoever?”
“Where is this coming from? What about the poem you wrote? What about all the crap for the past ten years?”
“You wrote that poem, Mom. I submitted it.”
“That’s not true.”
Mother and daughter squared off across the kitchen table. Nina’s presence permeated the house. This was the classic showdown. The moment of truth had come. Whose side was Amanda on? Was she in the fold or straying from the flock? This may not have been the sordid backfield of a Moncks Corner farm, where nefarious deeds occurred out of sight and out of memory, but it was the same essence—primary greed being advanced at all costs.
Amanda slumped in her chair. “Okay, whatever. Can you just help me with Jake?”
“You need to get to school. Your little excursion last week isn’t helping matters, but we’ll talk about that later.”
“What matters?”
“Principal Rugsdale called me this morning. He’s wondering what’s up with you.”
“I’m cool with him, Mom.”
Melanie paused a moment, considering the comment. She decided to leave it alone. “I’ll call Jake’s mother and see what’s going on.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s more like it. Now we need to get those papers signed that the Army men brought by.”
“What’s the rush?” Amanda asked, shifting from one line of thought suddenly to another. A distant alarm rang in her mind, perhaps indicating the acorn indeed does not drop too far from the tree.
“They just want it signed. You’ve done everything you need to do. You’ve met the requirements.”
“I’m supposed to see Miss Dwyer a couple more times.”
“You are trying my patience, Amanda. You’ve gone to her three times, and you’ve been to your father’s house. Now, when you get back from school today, I’m going to have the Army people here, and you will sign those papers.”
Amanda opened her mouth to speak, but stopped herself. She processed a myriad of thoughts faster than any computer chip might and decided to bite her tongue.
“I’ll see you after school then,” she said, breaking into a slight smile.
“That’s more like it.”
Amanda stood, twirled on her feet, and walked into the foyer.
“Amanda?”
“Yes, Mother?” She looked over her shoulder, noticing Nina’s shadow reaching from the dining room into the kitchen, cast by the rising sun blaring through the eight-foot east-facing glass in the bay window.
“Are you going to be okay?” The question was totally devoid of emotion, concern. It was more the stuff of a back alley pimp wearing a purple velvet fedora making nice with one of his girls.
Amanda cocked her head, pursed her lips and said, “Yeah, Mom. I’m good to go.”
CHAPTER 43
SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA
The morning sun glared through his window as he swirled his coffee cup. He leaned back in the faux leather chair of his makeshift home office and thought about the nom de plume, Del Dangurs. What did it mean to him? Who was he in relation to this name? Why was he at odds with himself over it? Was he his own Javert to the Valjean that resided within? So many questions wrestled in the mind
of a writer, he mused.
He scrolled through the article destroying Colonel Zach Garrett’s reputation. He had to admit it was brilliant, if he did say so himself. If they wanted to seal the public image of this man in a nefarious light, he had to agree that the mission was accomplished.
How far should he take this, he wondered? To what end? And what would be the next move? That was his primary question.
As he thought about next moves, Amanda Garrett came to his mind. An image of her hovered in his daydream, looking just how he had last seen her.
Pitching forward, he suddenly stood, then abruptly sat down again. He was anxious, and he knew why. He ran his slender fingers along the worn seam of the chair’s armrest.
“I’ve tried so hard to resist,” he whispered. He traced the outline of his face with his hand, feeling its smooth contours. Was he becoming obsessed with Amanda? It seemed as though she was being offered to him.
The paranoia reminded him of the electric charge he had felt when he’d been caught with Emily Wilkinson in college. He had been careful since then and had narrowly escaped being registered.
The case had been handled discreetly. Given his age at the time and the fact that Emily’s parents had wished to hide the event as much as he wanted to get beyond it, the mediator was able to reach an out-of-court settlement.
She had been drinking, after all, and she had willingly returned to his dorm room, the argument went. There were multiple eyewitnesses that could place her as the aggressor at the party. While the college had forced the issue to court, her parents chose to settle and keep the record sealed. Ultimately, there had been no charges brought against him for having sex with the under-aged girl.
He clicked his mouse and pulled up the Photoshop program. Two more clicks, and he found her face staring at him. He had conducted a Google search on her and then found her page on Classmembers.com. Though considerably older now, she was his first. And this was how he liked to remember her. Her blonde hair was parted down the middle, and her head was tilted to the side just a bit in typical yearbook fashion.
“So beautiful,” he whispered. “And so young.”
He smiled as he recalled Matthew McConaughey’s character’s line from the movie Dazed and Confused. “I love high school girls. I keep getting older, and they keep staying the same age.”
He had been careful to avoid obvious targets. With the broad reach of the Internet, his hunt had not been deterred. There were legions of young girls looking for adventure, especially from experienced men. For every twenty he “worked” through e-mails and chats, he might choose one.
Paranoia had to reign supreme. He knew about the stings the television programs were doing and how active undercover agents were patrolling the Net.
No, he was like a stockbroker who, if a stock doesn’t feel right to him immediately, he unloads it. And so it was with the girls. There were plenty that really did want to be with older men, especially one who would be famous one day.
His passion, aside from young girls, was his short stories. He fancied himself to be something of a modern-day Edgar Allen Poe, though he couldn’t portray that persona in public. This double life was fitting for a Gemini, born in June, he thought to himself.
Instantly his mood darkened as his eyes caught the cork bulletin boards he had posted around the spare bedroom. He had converted it into his author’s den. Viking, Random House, Pocket, Doubleday—all had rejected him, many times.
“Thank you for your submission, but we only take solicited manuscripts. . . .”
“While your writing is interesting, it’s not right for us at this moment. . . .”
Others were less kind, containing only the submitted manuscript and a form letter, usually unsigned.
Lately his short stories had taken on a more macabre tone, his real essence, with titles such as “The Knife.” It was about a married couple who learns each of them is cheating on the other. They scream at one another across the kitchen island, which has a solitary butcher’s knife poised in the middle.
Then there was “Seductive Fire” about a woman who bedded as many men as possible and burned them in their sleep.
“Nectar of Darkness” was perhaps his most disturbing, and most Poe-like, he believed. He had submitted it to an agent and was only waiting for the word that it had been sold. This was the one.
As he usually did, though, he was toying with the ending again. The narrator was contemplating whether to kill himself after falling in love with a young girl, or whether he should kill her because the laws prevented her from being his. Naturally he could not let anyone else have her.
Yes, “Nectar of Darkness” would be the one. If not, he didn’t know what he might do. But in part, his addiction to teenage girls was like a research project for his writing. He rationalized that if tapping into that prohibited wellspring of inspiration was required to catalyze his genius, then it was worth the risk. Society would thank him.
He thought that with some effort, he might be able to have it all at once—the writing, the girl, the reputation. It was all possible. He had desperately tried so many times to abstain from his weakness, but he could not. And he kept crossing the line. Like the marijuana user migrates to crack cocaine, it was to be expected, he told himself. He had considered waiting until she was eighteen, but that would be . . . not improper. And therefore less exciting.
And so, Amanda Garrett would be his . . . soon.
His computer beeped as an e-mail hit his inbox. He recognized the name and decided that it was time for more inspiration.
He read the e-mail and grabbed his car keys. Del Dangurs would have to wait, he decided. Though he was close, he knew, there would be no more research or writing today.
In fact, he would make a brief appearance and then pursue his new conquest.
CHAPTER 44
SPARTANBURG, South Carolina
“Why’d you leave yesterday? Thought you were hanging with me?” Brianna Simpson asked Amanda as they waited for Mister Dagus to appear for their fourth-period journalism class.
“Long story,” Amanda sighed as she slumped in her desk seat.
“Lenard is late. Talk to me, bitch.”
Amanda grimaced, not able to control the fury that raged in her mind like a wind-whipped ocean. She extracted her cell phone from her purse and checked it. No messages.
“Jake’s in jail,” she whispered.
“No way!” Brianna’s voice was not so much loud as it was emphatic. Sitting at the back of the classroom, each was convinced their conversation could not be overheard.
“I just found out. And I’m going nuts here thinking about it. Mom made me come to school. You know the deal, missing two days of school before graduation can get you pulled from the ceremony.” Amanda fidgeted for a second with her pencil, a mechanical number two from Jamaica advertising “Fun In The Sun!” along its beveled edges. “Not that I care about a graduation ceremony.”
“What happened? Why’s he in jail?” Brianna managed to hide her enthusiasm with a fair degree of furrow-browed concern—a kind of “I’m so sorry, but can you get on with the good stuff” approach. Inherent in a seventeen-year-old girl’s psychological repertoire was exactly this kind of duality. One hand was reaching out with consolation while the other was placed firmly around the throat, pumping for more information.
Amanda slumped even farther in her chair. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him all weekend and I haven’t been able to talk to him.”
“You told me you two had a fight?”
“I didn’t tell you the truth. Friday. We went up to North Carolina. To my dad’s place.”
“You did what?” Brianna had been with Amanda during the peak of her hatefulness toward her father. What little Brianna “knew” about Amanda’s father was from the last four years. Now it seemed that there might be a difference between what she had been led to believe and what might actually be true—not an easy distinction for a seventeen-year-old young lady.
“It’s part of the insurance thing. I had to go,” Amanda said, rolling her eyes out of habit. It sufficiently offset Brianna’s shock, making perfect sense to her shallow friend, she was certain.
“Still, you guys risked a lot by going up there, graduation being so close and all.”
The class had been gurgling with the loud murmur of several similar conversations, yet Amanda was certain that none of them centered on a half a million dollars, a burned-down house, a possibly murdered woman, and a jailed boyfriend. Though knowing some of her classmates, she couldn’t be sure.
Abruptly, as if intercepting her thoughts, the entire class stopped talking and turned their heads toward Amanda and Brianna.
Someone knew.
Somehow, someone had become privy to the information, and now the tidbit was like the faint red tip of a cigarette tossed into a windswept Montana forest. Its fire and ravenous energy was spreading quickly across the student population, consuming Amanda’s life. The captain of the girls’ swim team and the captain of the football team were soon to be locked in scandal.
“Is it true that Jake was boffing some old bitch and then killed her?” The voice was from a student whom she barely knew. She was a heavyset girl with oily brown hair and pimples across the bridge of her nose.
Amanda grabbed her book bag and purse and ran from the classroom. As she was approaching the door, she plowed squarely into Mister Dagus, who reacted by hugging her, wrapping his arm around her. She could feel her breasts pressing into his firm chest, her face against the bare skin exposed by the open collar.
He pushed her out to arm’s length, holding her by the shoulders.
“Whoah, Nellie. Amanda, are you okay?”
“I—I’m fine, Mister Dagus.” She looked away from him, embarrassed. She was drawn to something, though she couldn’t identify it. All she knew was that she needed to leave, and now. She felt herself starting to crack. She couldn’t take any more.
“I was just coming in to release the class. Some other things have come up for me today,” Dagus said.